CLEVELAND – A former Trumbull County commissioner has pleaded guilty to helping arrange millions of dollars in fraudulent member business loans from St. Paul Croatian FCU, a one-time $240-million credit union that failed in 2010.
Ted Vannelli, 66, was charged with helping his son-in-law, local developer A. Eddy Zai, obtain $17 million in MBLs from the defunct credit union by paying CEO Anthony Raguz thousands of dollars in bribes stuffed into envelopes. Zai is awaiting trial on the charges and has pleaded innocent.
Vannelli’s plea expands the scope of the case, the biggest fraud in credit union history, which until recently focused on Raguz’s fraudulent loans to individual borrowers, including Balkans crime figure Koljo Nikolovski, in exchange for bribes. NCUA has put the cost of the fraud at as much as $170 million.
Zai owned or operated solely or with Vannelli more than 14 entities used as “safe havens” for the credit union proceeds. The two would pay the St. Paul CEO cash payments in the form of $100 bills that were hand-delivered in envelopes in exchange for his approval of the loans, according to court records.
According to the indictment, the two also submitted false loan applications to Park View Federal Savings Bank, which suffered a loss of more than $750,000.
Nineteen people in all have been charged in the fraud, which forced NCUA to take over and liquidate the credit union in spring 2010.
